This paper describes approaches to teaching and learning and leading learning in educationally disadvantaged school through the Behaviour for Learning programme, The Behaviour for Learning Programme promotes positive behaviour and learning throughout the school by focusing on developing Behaviour for Learning Skills, Social and Emotional Literacy Skills, Academic Literacy and Learning Skills. Firstly, I will introduce the teacher briefly and the social context of teaching in the school. Secondly, I will outline the teacher’s approach to teaching using Fenstermacher and Soltis’s 2004 MAKER model of approaches to learning. Thirdly, I will discuss insights on leading learning drawing on work of Senge (1996), Fulham and Black et al (2004).

The assignment focuses on a ‘Behaviour for Learning’ teacher in an inner city DEIS school. The teacher works with identified students, individually or in small groups on Behaviour for Learning Programmes that are designed to meet their social, emotional, wellbeing and behavioural and academic needs. There are currently only 28 Behaviour for Learning Programme Teachers in primary and post-primary schools throughout the country. The ‘Behaviour for Learning’ teacher has a background in art and design education, a master’s in art therapy and a post graduate degree in psychology as well as up to date training with the NCSE (National Council for Special Education).

The school is based in an educationally disadvantaged area and has a DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) school status. The school forms part of the Department of Education and Skills social inclusion strategy to help children and young people who are at risk of or who are experiencing educational disadvantage. The Education Act 1998 defines educational disadvantage as “the impediments to education arising from social or economic disadvantage which prevent students from deriving appropriate benefit from education in schools’ (Citizens Information, n.d). Educational disadvantage presents itself in the school and the school community in many ways, most often in poor levels of participation and achievement in the formal education system and involvement in anti-social behaviour. There are other ways in which children may be disadvantaged, for example disability, literacy difficulties, poverty etc. The National Anti-Poverty Strategy considers educational disadvantage as ‘discontinuities between the school and non-school experiences of children’.